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Navigating a Potentially Precarious Future: How to Make the Most of Our Economy and Technology

Susan Lund, a partner at the McKinsey Global Institute, co-authored a December 2017 report titled “Jobs lost, jobs gained: Workforce transitions in a time of automation.” The report analyzes the future destruction and creation of jobs, as well as the rise of independent workers, thus making Lund an authority—or at least, as much of an authority as it’s possible to be when forecasting the future—on the future of workers. Like many of our interviewees, Lund emphasized the importance of lifelong learning and continual worker training. “I think there will need to be a shift in all companies thinking about building the talent they need and developing their own talent in-house,” said Lund, “as opposed to just trying to hire from the outside, particularly for occupations where there a lot of shortages of skills. We’re starting to see that shift.” Lund points out that there is a large spectrum of potential future scenarios, based on the as-yet-unknown speed of impending automation. Lund sees the future as one of both challenges and possibilities. “The new world of technology has a lot to offer us,” says Lund, “but I think that left unmanaged and without thinking about workforce transitions, we could end up with growing inequality, high-skilled people who are employed and large swaths of other people working at very low-wage jobs, if they’re working at all.”